Guild FW-3 Fuzz/Wah

devonteran

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I got this at a retro/hipster store the other day.

It wasn't working quite right so I paid $30 and soldered it up when I got home.
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I was wondering if anyone here could tell me more about this pedal?

It's not particularly a great fuzz or a great wah. The wah is good for filterish stuff but not so funky. The fuzz in incredibly harsh and thin, but nice when the volume is dialed back a bit. The volume doesn't cut out in the heel down position and the pedal boosts my signal overall to the place where it almost forces my amp to break up - even when bypassed.

I'm hoping to find a schematic so I can tweak this pedal into something very usable for me. I don't think it would take too much. I like the overall character of the fuzz and wah but they need to have their dynamics brought out a bit more. The main thing that bugs me is how it changes my overall tone when in my signal chain.

I don't have space on my board for both a wah and a volume pedal so now I just use a volume, if I could make this take that place I'd be adding a lot of versatility to me setup.
 

MrBoZiffer

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I don't know anything about it, but I will say that it can be a bit difficult tracking down info on some of Guild's effects. They weren't very popular, which is why they mainly stuck to guitars. A lot, if not most, of their effects were subbed out to other builders. For instance the Copicat was by Watkins, and the Foxey Lady was by Mike Matthews (EHX) as well as Mosrite. It could be that the FW-3 was made by another company for Guild. If so, then it might be easier finding info on it's counterpart.

Cool pedal though. Enjoy it!
 

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You could try replacing the electrolytic capacitors first- they're probably dried out. That might help and it's probable that you could get them at the nearest Radio Shack. You should also replace the stomp switch with a true bypass switch. That would stop the fuzzwah from loading down the signal. You could also check to see if the resistors have drifted. If that's not something you're comfortable with, you could check with EHman (Ron Neeley) and see if he would go through it. He worked on a couple of EH pedals for me and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend him, great guy and a pleasure to work with.
That's a nice pickup. They go for decent money on ebay.
 
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